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IN HONOUR OF PETER NARVÁEZ 30-2, 2008
Pauline GREENHILL, Diane TYE, Holly EVERETT Peter NARVÁEZ Richard MACKINNON Michael MACDONALD James MOREIRA Jodi MCDAVID Ronald LABELLE Ian BRODIE Joy FRASER Pat BYRNE Kelly BEST Martin LABA |
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FOLKLORE AND MARGINALITY Peter Narváez It is a great honour to receive the Marius Barbeau Award and I’m particularly humbled to recognize the company of my distinguished predecessors. I offer you all my heartfelt thanks with special appreciations to my colleagues Diane Tye, Pauline Greenhill, Holly Everett, and Neil Rosenberg, as well as to all my ex-students who are participating on the thematic panels linked to my work. (1) As a Hispanic Canadian immigrant of Mexican and Puerto Rican working-class parentage, I count myself extremely fortunate to have been able to pursue a career in folklore, ethnology and ethnomusicology at the Department of Folklore of Memorial University of Newfoundland, an inspiring place. For over thirty years, I have found the work of communicating and documenting the traditional expressive behaviours of working-class cultures to be immensely satisfying. The works of folklorists, ethnologists and ethnomusicologists have long recognized the social importance of the vernacular arts and I’ve enjoyed being a part of that project. As a student of occupational folklife, I also realize that work is transformative — everyone is affected by their job. What, therefore, have I taken from my work as a teacher of folklore (besides my penchant for lecturing on cue, an occupational hazard many of you are familiar with)? The answer is, my large repertoire of occupational stories. I think it appropriate, therefore, at this occupational rite of passage, to briefly account for my links to this remarkable profession through a few, short exemplary narratives. But first, the connection of my identity in Newfoundland as a folklorist, “blues godfather,” and “CFA” (come from away) or “NBC” (Newfoundlander by choice). During my long stay in the region, I have been asked a personal question more times than I would care to remember: “What kind of name is ‘Narváez’ anyway?” My responses to the surname query have achieved formulaic proportions. Fatigue attending the tedious, repetitive pronouncements of my initial explanation undoubtedly accounts for what has eventually become a bold venture into the realm of creative verbal prank. The first, usual account that I have offered for my surname is simply the truth, that “Narváez” is a name of Spanish origin from my mother’s side of my distant family in Puerto Rico. But as all raconteurs know, the truth can be rather limiting. Thus, I’ve developed a couple of alternative, or from a folkloristic perspective shall we say “variant,” etiological accounts. One involves a motif of place: the substitution of “Spaniard’s Bay” (in Conception Bay) for “Puerto Rico.” Another explanation expands the narrative further. When a knowledgeable person informed about the area asks, “but I’ve never heard of the name ‘Narváez’ in Conception Bay,” I retort — “You see, in common usage, the name is always heard in translation: ‘Narváez’ has become ‘Noseworthy’!” I also provide a final explanation for what a person with my name is doing here in Canada. I say, “I’m a member of one of the initial waves of the great Hispanic horde slowly migrating northward.” While I have always made this comment in jest, it saddens me that recent events in the United States bear witness to large sectors of North American society accepting this Latin “horde” stereotype. My surname accounts may be viewed as family folklore, but they are also evidence of my ethnic marginality. As a marginal, I have lots of company. Covering a broad spectrum of social circumstances, the folklore of marginality, often a folklore of confusion generated by cultural participation in more than one group, is one of the most common threads of expressive behaviour in contemporary life and it plays a prominent role in my occupational narratives. In fact, I encountered a dramatic instance of someone else’s marginality on my first day as a resident of St. John’s. Thirty-one years ago I moved to Newfoundland from the state of Maine. As it turned out, this move was the trip of my life. My application for landed immigrant status, however, had stalled the process and a surprise going-away party that my friends in Harrison, Maine had put on for me at the end of August, ultimately proved embarrassing. After hugs and tearful farewells, the days and weeks passed and, despite daily calls to the Canadian embassy, my official papers didn’t arrive. Finally, after ten days of waiting, tired of dodging friends and ducking around corners, to avoid the dreaded “Pete, are you still here?” I packed up my car, drove to Boston and parked outside the Canadian embassy. For a week, I slept in my car, ate junk food and saw foreign films. Finally one morning in mid-September my usual morning query at the Embassy was answered with, “It’s here!” Three harrowing days later I arrived in St. John’s. It was past 11 p.m and I wasn’t in very good shape. Most significantly, I was sick with a half paralyzed face that necessitated an eye patch because the lids of my left eye wouldn’t close. As well, a bout of slurred speech made it almost impossible for me to pronounce words with the letter “f,” like the word “folklore,” for example. These were the ill effects of Bell’s palsy, a condition I contracted during my long road trip from New England. Beyond these immediate discomforts, a delayed drive from the Argentia ferry had left me with a nagging hunger. I was famished. Fortunately, within a few minutes I spotted a very small take-out pizza joint on Water St. known as “Napoli’s.” As I was the lone customer, the counter attendant-cook (who I found out later everyone called “Mr. Napoli”) served me a couple of slices that I began devouring with gusto. After the first few bites, craving gave way to pleasure and sociability. I commented amiably, “You certainly have a lovely city. I’m moving here.” For an instant, a horrified glance from Mr. Napoli made me think that my friendly remark had been misheard. “No good! No good!” he implored. Then, leaning closer to me, he somberly warned: “This place filled with liars! Cheats! Thieves!” Although I was born in Brooklyn, New York, I grew up in a fairly small town in New Jersey, so in moving to St. John’s I was trekking to the largest city I have ever lived in. Thus for several days, before I realized that I had moved to one of the friendliest places on earth, I took Mr. Napoli’s warning quite seriously; for me, after all, it was a big city. In later months I found out a possible cause for his bitterness; he had experienced immigration problems regarding his family and additionally he was fighting City Hall to obtain a liquor license for a restaurant he had proposed. The restaurant eventually opened but Mr. Napoli never obtained the liquor license. He developed an alternative system. When ordering a meal, he would ask me if I would like the house’s “special coffee,” which in fact was a glass of chianti in a coffee cup. My own immigrant experiences of marginality began shortly thereafter. The first involved the regional pronunciation of Newfoundland English and it occurred in a class. To set the context, I was discussing social functionalism and folklore, and was explaining the differences between manifest and latent functions. Throwing the concepts back to the class, I asked what were the socially unstated but real social reasons for various customary behaviours, for instance, a “mixer” of first year students where dancing and drinking would take place. There was the usual lag while I waited for a response. Finally, a young man in the second row asserted, “Six!” “Six?” I repeated quizzically. “Yes, six!” he maintained. “Six what?” I asked as numerous students began to knowingly giggle with glee. Aggravated for providing a thoughtful answer, that was clearly misunderstood, the student shouted a final time, “Six! Six!”. “Got it!” I groaned, knowing that I would never, ever mix up my understanding of Es and Is in Newfoundland English again. My own marginality was dramatized even further during my first fieldwork in Newfoundland. This occurred at a household in a very small outport on a lonely shore. I arrived in the evening and after a few pleasantries over tea and biscuits, I set up my tape recorder and heard some wonderful songs and monologues. After two hours I mentioned that I should be going. “Where?” I was asked. “Oh,” I innocently said, “to a nearby hotel and motel.” Everyone laughed. “Not around here; why don’t you stay with us?” someone offered. “You can sleep in Ralph’s room.” Ralph, an octogenarian, was the elder resident of this expanded family. “Great!” I responded. When I was eventually led to Ralph’s room, I thought at first that there was some mistake, for all I saw there was one regular sized bed that through years of hard use had been worn into the shape of a bowl, the steep declivities of the sides leading toward a deep center. Attempting to overcome ethnocentric panic, I kept telling myself, “This is fine. I must learn to accept different cultural perspectives. There’s no problem!” But there were problems. One, I learned about that evening, was that for over twenty years Ralph and his brother had slept in that bed together; and during cold nights Ralph liked to cuddle in his sleep. That night, extricating myself from Ralph’s powerful grasp in order to cling to the edges of the vessel-like bed was no mean feat. However, on beginning to sleep myself, periodically my grip on the bed edge would loosen, causing my slide into the depths of the center, where I would experience Ralph’s iron grasp yet again. After what seemed like hours I finally achieved an uneasy sleep, only to be awakened by Ralph’s sleepwalking across the bed to get to his urinal potty beneath. Unfortunately, in accomplishing this balancing act (don’t forget, the bed had a curved surface), he squarely placed one of his feet on the middle of my chest for better support. My first thought was that I was experiencing the worst case of “The Old Hag” on record! Sleepless, when the first rays of dawn eventually arrived, I dragged myself downstairs, trudged to the kitchen table and put my head down. Shortly afterwards, a member of the family, Colleen, wandered in to make everybody breakfast. Smiling cheerfully she queried, “How did you sleep?” “Fine!” I lied with feigned enthusiasm. Later, staring out the kitchen window, thinking of the long drive ahead, I thought, “So much for participant observation, from now on I’ll bring my sleeping bag.”
1. Award presented on 27 May 2006 at the Annual Meeting of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada, held at York University, Toronto. [pp. 21-26] |
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